Author Archives: Dale

About Dale

Journalist in the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery

Engaging the public on the omnibudget

Posted on by

With the omnibus budget bill now passed Second Reading, the NDP summoned the media to the National Press Theatre to discuss their plans going forward. Those plans include getting public input by holding town hall-style hearings outside of Ottawa, and through an “unprecedented” social media campaign which includes a websiteand the hashtag #HarperBudget.

The website is a single page, whose most predominant feature is the comment box at the centre for Canadians to give their input on the omnibus budget bill. The box to the side calls it a “Trojan Horse” bill – which it’s not – and there are five pop-up boxes at the bottom, under headings like “the environment” or “healthcare” that each have four or five bullet points about provisions in the bill. It’s not comprehensive, it doesn’t cover a number of things in the bill that are equally troubling (like dismantling the Inspector General’s office at CSIS). When Peggy Nash said they would be “shining a light” and “deconstructing” the bill, this is a fairly superficial attempt at doing so.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Omnibudget off to committee

Posted on by

The omnibus budget bill has passed Second Reading without any procedural trickery, and is off to committee for study, while it also begins pre-study in a number of different Senate committees. The NDP, however, are promising “novel” ways to engage the public on the issue. My question is why it’s taken them two weeks to start engaging the public.

The reaction to John Baird’s outburst in QP yesterday that they were shutting down the National Round Table on Environment and the Economy because they didn’t like their recommendations has largely been “told you so.” (Said outburst included a slip where he said a carbon tax would “kill Canadians” when he obviously meant “kill jobs.”) While some people say that everything Baird says is calculated, I’m not so sure – this had a bit more of a tone of mocking and an attempt to goad the Liberals that may have backfired, and I suspect that he may have been given a stern talking to by PMO, and will be reading his responses during his next turn as back-up PM.

Continue reading →

QP: Confirming ideological cuts?

Posted on by

Without a weekly edition of Monday Morning Sanctimony to set the tone, we waited anxiously to see just how the Official Opposition were going to be holding the government to account. And when the appointed hour came, Thomas Mulcair stood up to denounce the omnibus budget bill and wondered what happened to those principles that Harper once espoused about these kinds of things. John Baird, acting as Back-up PM du jour responded that they were “focused like a laser” on jobs and growth, while the NDP was busy playing procedural games. (Could we please ban “focused like a laser”? It’s not cool or clever). When Mulcair asked about the environmental and EI provisions in the bill that gave the ministers an inordinate amount of power, Baird reminded him of Peter Julian’s 11-hour filibuster on the original budget. Peggy Nash was up next to wonder about the savings that the OAS changes will deliver, but Diane Finely was ready with her talking points about future sustainability. Bob Rae got up and listed off the number of organisations being slashed in the omnibus budget – the Inspector General of CSIS, Rights and Democracy, the National Round Table on Environment and Environment, the First Nations institute, the National Council of Welfare, and so on. Baird insisted that if they didn’t make these changes then the country would become the “Welfare capital of the world,” as Ontario was under Rae’s leadership. Not only that, but NRTEE advocated instituting a carbon tax, which the Liberals obviously were in favour of, which is why they wanted NRTEE kept intact. No, really, he said that. When Rae called him on that, Baird repeated it. Remember that the original reason why NRTEE was being cut was because it was from an era when there weren’t other such research organisations, but there are apparently plenty of them out there now. Now Baird seems to be indicating that the reason they were being cut was over a policy disagreement. Uh oh. (In the scrums after QP, Baird started combining both reasons, for the record). For Rae’s final question, he asked about the growing number of bungled military procurement contracts and wondered if we weren’t headed for a “Decade of Doofus.” Baird returned to an old talking point about how the Liberals oversaw a “decade of darkness.”

Continue reading →

Roundup: Convenient committee travel

Posted on by

While there is supposed to be a special sub-committee of Finance where environment critics can study the environmental portions of the omnibus budget bill, that has entirely been made problematic by the fact that environment committee – which means the associated critics – will be travelling this week as part of a study on the National Conservation Plan, and they’ll be in Alberta and BC. But it should be noted that this plan was approved weeks ago, so it’s entirely possible the timing of this was not a deliberate ploy (giving full benefit of the doubt).

Parliamentary watchdogs and auditors are starting to collaborate and work together more – much to the chagrin of senior public servants and the Treasury Board, who grumble that these agents of parliament are just looking for trouble to justify their existence.

Poor Peter MacKay – after equivocating within an inch of his life on what he knew about the costs of the Libya mission when he went public about them, he now blames the opposition and media for the controversy. Because nothing he says or does is ever his fault.

BC Premier Christy Clark has also joined in on the criticism of Thomas Mulcair’s take on oil sands development and his warnings of the “Dutch disease.” (And how many people crying about the “Dutch disease” and our “petrodollar” take into account the fact that the Americans have slowly but surely been devaluing their own currency to manage their debt?)

More analysis that the Liberals held more in camera meetings than the Conservatives? Don’t be fooled, says Kady O’Malley, who points out that top-line numbers don’t reveal that committees do go in camera for legitimate reasons – like picking witness lists and drafting reports, and the Liberals drafted a whole lot more reports than the current Conservative majority. Add to that, most of the previous in camera meetings were done by unanimous vote, not under opposition protest. And a reminder about why committees go in camera and what the alternatives might be (which aren’t really good either).

The president of the Canada West Foundation and one of the staunchest defenders of “Triple E” Senate “reform” has now backed away from his position, and actually sees more harm than good in the government’s current “reform” plans. This is big news in conservative circles, and should hopefully prompt some re-thinking of a flawed (and rather boneheaded) attempt to kludge together some reforms that will only make the system worse and will have no added democratic benefits in the long run.

And if you haven’t yet, watch Elizabeth May’s speech in the House on Friday about the omnibus budget bill. It’s probably one of the best denunciations of it to date.

Roundup: Taking the omnibudget threat seriously

Posted on by

So, remember what I was saying yesterday about how the opposition – and the NDP in particular would be hammering away at the government in QP about the omnibus budget bill if they truly considered it to be the major priority and affront to democracy that it is? Well, it only took them until the end of the second round – a full 25 minutes into QP – to ask a pair of broad and general questions about the omnibus nature of the bill, and 38 minutes to ask a couple of substantive questions about a particularly troubling measure within it (and didn’t take the parliamentary secretary to task for her nonsense answer during the supplemental question, like they should have). Apparently this constitutes taking an existential threat to parliamentary democracy seriously.

What’s that? More problems with defence procurements that say they’re going to be one thing (in this case vehicular power transmission components) and turns out to be something else (13 armoured vehicles)? You don’t say! Meanwhile, the military says that Peter MacKay would have known the actual cost estimates of the Libya mission when he reported a much lower figure to parliament. I am shocked – shocked!

The RCMP Commissioner has sent warning letters out to provincial commissioners of firearms to warn against setting up backdoor long-gun registries. The problem of course is that he doesn’t exactly have the ability to meddle in provincial jurisdiction like he – and Vic Toews – would like to on this issue.

The Public Service Commission is investigating whether eleven employees were improperly hired at ACOA due to political interference.

Here’s a more in-depth look at the situation that MDA finds itself in while the government drags its feet on signing the contract for the next phase of the RADARSAT constellation.

Harper and his team continue to try and get Helena Guergis’ lawsuit against them dismissed.

The punitive measures that the Conservatives and NDP imposed on the Liberals around campaign financing retroactively on the 2006 leadership race continues to haunt some of the former contenders.

Here’s a bit of an explainer of what some of the latest “Pierre Poutine” revelations mean.

And Lisa Raitt talks about her battle with post-partum depression to help raise awareness of mental health.

A few observations on the procedural wrangling

Posted on by

The kinds of procedural wrangling to try and slow up or affect the omnibus budget implementation bill has started to split along party lines in the opposition, which lends itself to a few different observations, if I may. The NDP has decided that their tactic will be to try to move twenty different motions in twenty different committees to try and get those committees to study the portions of the bill relevant to their area of study, seeing as attempts to break up the bill have failed. After all, the government did agree to break-up pre-study of the bill over in the Senate to the various relevant committees, so why not in the Commons? The complicating factor there, of course, is that it has become standard operating procedure for the government to move any opposition motion in a committee to an in camera discussion, which shuts out the public, and then the government will use their majority to defeat it out of the public eye. The likely effect is to show that the government is being unreasonable, but that doesn’t touch the substance of the bill itself.

The Liberals have decided that since there are some 750 clauses in the bill, that they will move amendments to delete those clauses in report stage, after the bill has come back from the committee. That’s a whole lot of votes. Likewise, Green Party leader Elizabeth May has also decided that there are some 700 amendments that she can move at report stage, owing to her particular status, and she intends to fully exercise that right. Again, that could be some 700 votes in the Chamber. And both of these tactics address the substance of the bill.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Cutting legislative corners

Posted on by

Concerns have been raised that private members’ bills are creating laws with less rigorous scrutiny, and that the government is using this to cut corners. Which is pretty much a big “well, yeah – obviously.” Private members’ bills are not drafted with the assistance of the Department of Justice, but rather by some underpaid clerks in the Library of Parliament, and the time allotted for debate is really limited – two hours per stage in the Commons, and maybe two committee meetings. And yes, the government has been taking advantage of this fact, but for a number of reasons. Sometimes that advantage is tactical – if it’s a PMB and not a government bill, it’s open for a free vote so you can get some opposition MPs onside as they (normally) won’t be whipped on it. If those free votes can sow some division, as with the long-gun registry bill in the previous parliament, so much the better. Sometimes it is genuinely an idea from the backbenches that the government likes, which I suspect the masked rioter bill was after it tapped into some good old-fashioned populist outrage after incidents like the Stanley Cup riots in Vancouver. But this having been said, I doubt that it’s often being done for the sake of less oversight and debate considering the speed with which these bills proceed, and no, not every bill or motion from a government backbencher is a backdoor attempt by the government to do something (like the Woodworth abortion motion, so stop insisting that it is. Seriously – just stop). A large part of the problem, however, stems from the fact that MPs are conflating their own roles, and they like to think of themselves as American-style lawmakers, and certain opposition parties – like the NDP in particular – like to use their private members’ business to advance party goals rather than the personal policy hobbyhorses of their MPs, like PMBs are intended to do. We need to be mindful that MPs are not there make laws, but are rather to hold those who do to account, and that has been eroded. PMBs are supposed to be limited in scope and effect because it’s not an MP’s job to make laws.  When this role becomes conflated, problems like this one start creeping into the system.

Continue reading →

QP: A comprehensive plan

Posted on by

Now that the NDP have declared procedural war on the omnibus budget bill, it quite predictably led off QP. Thomas Mulcair started off with a general question about omnibus legislation, reminding us about Young Stephen Harper’s dislike of them, but Harper was not moved, and instead called the bill a “comprehensive” approach to the Economic Action Plan™. Mulcair then moved on cuts to pensions, food inspection and border services, not that Harper was moved by them. For his last question, Mulcair asked about an incident where an ailing fisherman off the coast of Newfoundland’s radio medical services call was routed to Rome, Italy, and how the government would be putting the lives of Canadians in jeopardy. Harper simply told Mulcair to read the budget, as there were no changes on that file. Bob Rae picked up on that non-answer, and was this time answered by the responsible minister, Keith Ashfield, who insisted that an internationally recognised service provider was used as a backup, as always. Rae moved back to the omnibus budget, and the new powers of that cabinet will be gaining as part of the legislated changes, and called the move “dictatorial.” Harper shrugged it off, and spoke about how much clarity investors will get from these environmental changes – which probably speaks volumes.

Continue reading →

Roundup: Failed negotiations and procedural delays

Posted on by

The news that the Conservatives were going to bend ever so slightly and make some very minor amendments to their still massively problematic refugee reform bill yesterday may have buoyed NDP spirits that the government was going to agree to split up the omnibus budget bill – but to no avail. The government decided that no, even if they split it up, the NDP would simply delay seven bills instead of one, so they said no. Nathan Cullen responded by saying they were “afraid” of the debate, and that he would be consulting with his critics about their next steps, but one had to wonder why they didn’t already have that in place considering they were fresh out of a caucus meeting. (Marc Garneau, incidentally, described the NDP as having been slapped in the face by the Conservatives, and that perhaps they had been a bit naïve in believing this government would actually negotiate). So what did the NDP decide to do? Procedural delays, forcing votes in the Commons until time for government orders expired, with no actual debate taking place on said bill for the day. That’s fine, Peter Van Loan said – we’ll simply move your opposition day (scheduled for today) until next Wednesday, after the vote. The Liberals, meanwhile, criticised the NDP tactics as “too cute by half,” since they were only denying debate and not actually changing the voting date considering time allocation (though they fought over that bit of procedure). I guess we’ll see how this plays out over the course of today, because it’s going to mean a lot of procedural tactics if they want to try and delay a full day’s worth of debate, or if they’ll try some other kinds of tactics to prove their point.

Continue reading →

QP: No warpath, just general questions

Posted on by

One would have thought that with the Conservatives having rejected the NDP formal request to split the omnibus budget implementation bill that Thomas Mulcair would be on the warpath. But no – he instead started off QP by asking a fairly broad question about the bill and its large environmental component, and Harper answered with a general response about the need to “streamline” review processes. Mulcair then went to the issue of the demise of the Public Appointments Commission in said bill, and he got into a back-and-forth with Harper about the NDP voting to kill it (never mind that it was a non-binding motion rejecting the proposed commissioner). Matthew Kellway then got up to ask about the updated cost figures from the F-35s, and Julian Fantino got up for the first time in ages to assure the House that there is not only a Seven-Point Plan™, but rather a Seven-Point Action Plan™ for the procurement process. Bob Rae rose for the Liberals, and went after the government for their using the CRA to investigate charities they don’t like, never mind that ones they do like get hundreds of thousands of dollars in foreign donations. Harper insisted that the CRA is an arm’s length agency and that charities have to operate within clear limits.

Continue reading →